macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[Minghold]

Best: Like above, but install Mojave instead of Catalina. After the all-updates phase, create another MacOS Extended (journaled) partition on the external drive, the clone the new APFS Mojave partition to it. Boot into it to verify it works, manually migrate your documents, then erase the internal drive as MacOS Extended (journaled), then clone the OS again. Result: a system that runs noticeably faster, and runs much, much more software.

So if I glean this correctly, the best route is to install and fully update Mojave onto an external disk and clone it into HFS+, then clone that again to HFS+ on the internal SSD? That's a workaround to not using APFS at all?

Correct. (And it doesn't matter whether the internal drive is hdd, ssd, or fusion.) Running off HFS+ is one of the major goals of staying with Mojave., as it's the last OS capable of doing so (as well as the last that'll run the preexisting mountain of 32bit software). Catalina was a planned-obsolescence OS deliberately designed to run like garbage on intel Macs, and prompt users into spending thousands upgrading for Apple's subscription-model rubber room future.

 

[marvS]

I used the Catalina patcher to install macOS Catalina on my 15-inch MacBook Pro 2009 and was successful in doing so. The only problem seems to be that the internal SuperDrive is not being recognized. It does not show up in Diskutil, or Finder or in System Information. A reset of SMC or PVRAM does not make it appear. The terminal command DRUTIL does not return anything except for the version command IOKit: 2.0.2 (21474836.47) and DiskRecording: 9.0.3b5.

Anyone know how I can get the drive to be detected? The drive spins up at boot and when a disk is inserted, regardless of that it should still appear in the system information list.

 

[Minghold]

I used the Catalina patcher to install macOS Catalina on my 15-inch MacBook Pro 2009 and was successful in doing so. The only problem seems to be that the internal SuperDrive is not being recognized. It does not show up in Diskutil, or Finder or in System Information. A reset of SMC or PVRAM does not make it appear. The terminal command DRUTIL does not return anything except for the version command IOKit: 2.0.2 (21474836.47) and DiskRecording: 9.0.3b5.

Anyone know how I can get the drive to be detected? The drive spins up at boot and when a disk is inserted, regardless of that it should still appear in the system information list.

Unless there's a feature Catalina has and Mojave does not that you can't live without out, you're much better off running a Mojave/HFS+ setup on that 2009. It'll be much faster, and run 32bit apps.. (If hardware-acceleration will not enable on the incapable machine, then backgrade further to High Sierra, and install Chromium-legacy as a modern browser.)

 

[Aesthetica]

EDIT IGNORE WRING THREAD AND CANT FIND A DELETE BUTTON


Hi all hope you’re good, looking forward to the Olympics starting! Got a weird issue today.

My 2011 iMac with a K4100 in it running (I think) 12.2 randomly crashed and wouldn’t restart - kept trying to boot and ending up back at the drive selection screen.

- I installed Monterey on an external drive to investigate
- It booted fine, but when I installed root patches the external drive looped just like the internal
- I booted into an install USB and ran the commands found under

“Stuck on boot after root patching”​

here - it now booted up fine but obviously without graphics acceleration. Now I’ve reran the patches and it’s back to boot-looping 😡. I’ve been running this setup just fine for about 2 years. Haven’t touched any OS updates, any idea what could have caused this seemingly random situation?

 

[Inkanus]

I'm having a hard time finding information about how new OS systems work on old, unsupported Macs. I have an Imac 2011 27'' with a Radeon 6770 512Mb card. We normally use MacBooks at home. This is the computer I pay bills on, I use it for Pages, Numbers, etc. How will Catalina-Sonoma work on this computer? Will the versions of these systems work reasonably well? Will I be able to use these programs? Will I launch YouTube? Regards

 

[RK78]

Already have the bootable USB installer (dosdude) used to successfully install 10.15.7 to my iMac some years ago, but now want to use that installer to install 10.15.7 to a new empty SSD drive on that Mac, already formatted with a now empty APFS volume.

Have tried several approaches but nothing seems to lead to this. Can someone please suggest how to use the installer for this task. Thanks.

 

[apriliars3]

How can install newer macOS Catalina for Macbook 4.1?

I have installed macOS Lion 10.7.5 and Safari or Firefox not compatible with YouTube and a lot of webs.

I tried to download macOS patcher but I don´t find.

Thanks

 

[jmp473]

Already have the bootable USB installer (dosdude) used to successfully install 10.15.7 to my iMac some years ago, but now want to use that installer to install 10.15.7 to a new empty SSD drive on that Mac, already formatted with a now empty APFS volume.

Have tried several approaches but nothing seems to lead to this. Can someone please suggest how to use the installer for this task. Thanks.

First you need to start over and create a new installer. Certificates, permissions, etc expire. Make a fresh one.

 

[RK78]

Already done. Now what?

 

[David403]

Already done. Now what?

Your disk needs to be formatted as HFS and NOT APFS. High Sierra was the first OS to be able to use APFS.

 

[RK78]

Your disk needs to be formatted as HFS and NOT APFS. High Sierra was the first OS to be able to use APFS.

We may be in danger of being sidetracked, maybe some misunderstanding, but we are talking about Catalina 10.15 no? Catalina, 2 OS versions after High Sierra 10.13. I'm about to replace the internal HDD with an SSD, but in addition to running High Sierra 10.13.6, have been running Catalina 10.15.7 (via dosdude patcher) formatted APFS on a separate partition for at least the last 3 years.

To return, my goal is to find a way to install the Catalina, including current data, on a new, empty SSD volume. The SSD temporarily mounted in an external enclosure, before installing that SSD internally to the iMac and replacing the old HDD. To note, have an external clone of that Catalina, if that will be of any use, perhaps by way of Migration Assistant?

 

[David403]

We may be in danger of being sidetracked, maybe some misunderstanding, but we are talking about Catalina 10.15 no? Catalina, 2 OS versions after High Sierra 10.13. I'm about to replace the internal HDD with an SSD, but in addition to running High Sierra 10.13.6, have been running Catalina 10.15.7 (via dosdude patcher) formatted APFS on a separate partition for at least the last 3 years.

To return, my goal is to find a way to install the Catalina, including current data, on a new, empty SSD volume. The SSD temporarily mounted in an external enclosure, before installing that SSD internally to the iMac and replacing the old HDD. To note, have an external clone of that Catalina if that will be of any use, perhaps by way of Migration Assistant?

Sorry, you are absolutely correct - it's so long since I used Catalina that I forgot it came after both High Sierra and Mojave.

Sorry again

 

[BjarneDM]

For that kind of task, I'm using / would be using Carbon Copy Cloner . It's worth every (penny|cent), I've ever spent on the program.

 

[RK78]

For that kind of task, I'm using / would be using Carbon Copy Cloner . It's worth every (penny|cent), I've ever spent on the program.

Already have CCC5/6. Agree, CCC is invaluable. But from the bootable patcher, used DU restore, which brought the Cat system and data volumes into the SSD, allowing me me to bypass what would have been one possible route, Migration Assistant from the external clone.

Everything now appears to be where it should be in the new SSD volume.

 

[RK78]

New SSD installed now internally with Catalina dosdude 10.15.7. From experience I expect Brave or any Chrome based browser to crash on open, but now Firefox latest 128.3.1 also crashes on first open. Then if I wait for the crash announcement to appear it opens and continues to open after that.

Anyone also seeing this? If so any suggestions for a solution? Already ran the patches from the USB installer 2X plus cleared caches before restart - didn't appear to make any difference. Also to note, it was behaving this way even when the SSD was running externally.

 

[avz]

New SSD installed now internally with Catalina dosdude 10.15.7. From experience I expect Brave or any Chrome based browser to crash on open, but now Firefox latest 128.3.1 also crashes on first open. Then if I wait for the crash announcement to appear it opens and continues to open after that.

Anyone also seeing this? If so any suggestions for a solution? Already ran the patches from the USB installer 2X plus cleared caches before restart - didn't appear to make any difference. Also to note, it was behaving this way even when the SSD was running externally.

From the patcher FAQ:

 

[RK78]

From the patcher FAQ:

View attachment 2435577

Thanks already saw that. But what remains puzzling is that before cloning/restoring my dosdude 10.15.7 to the new SSD, this never used to happen with Firefox - only with Brave or Chrome. In fact, never could get Brave or Chrome to run at all. Maybe a complete reinstall will go the trick, though not sure it's worth all the trouble.

Perhaps the beginning of the crash report might offer a clue:

 

[RK78]

deleted

 

[BjarneDM]

@RK78 There's nothing you can do about it; you'll just have to learn to live w/ this issue.
I've been seeing this w/ Firefox for a loooong time on my MacBookPro8,3.

As you suggested, I originally -when I got this issue- took a look at the crash report; and tried messing around w/ the signature verification process - no luck.

 

[VaZ]

Thanks already saw that. But what remains puzzling is that before cloning/restoring my dosdude 10.15.7 to the new SSD, this never used to happen with Firefox - only with Brave or Chrome. In fact, never could get Brave or Chrome to run at all. Maybe a complete reinstall will go the trick, though not sure it's worth all the trouble.

Perhaps the beginning of the crash report might offer a clue:

View attachment 2435603

What if you Right-Click Open ?

 

[BjarneDM]

What if you Right-Click Open ?

Doesn't work ... I more-or-less tried everything

 

[RK78]

I have just released version 1.3.6 of Catalina Patcher, which should fix the issue where some third-party applications wouldn't launch. If you have been having this issue, you can either use the latest Catalina Patcher version, or run "sudo nvram boot-args=amfi_get_out_of_my_way=0x1" in Terminal, and then reboot.
[automerge]1585672919[/automerge]

Run "sudo nvram boot-args=amfi_get_out_of_my_way=0x1" in Terminal then reboot. That should take care of that issue.

Realize that this is from an old post, but on my 10.15.7, (Late '09 iMac 10,1) ran this suggested command: sudo nvram boot-args=amfi_get_out_of_my_way=0x1 and, while it allowed Firefox to open on the first launch, it rather messed up the settings in my 128.3esr, which now show misaligned checkboxes, as well as very elongated settings items, which had previously been fixed with CSS, but which now has no effect at all.

Have tried several things found from searching, including:
sudo nvram boot-args=""; sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist DisableLibraryValidation -bool true

Can you or anyone suggest how to reverse this command or a fix for its ill effects. Thanks.

EDIT: besides all that, this fix doesn't last through a restart - just the ill effects on Firefox

 

[zeratul75]

hi guys. what is the correct way to have NOT installed a patch, that was previously installed in the post installation patch process? I mean, it was selected and I made post install patch. Now I only want to remove that single patch. Is it enough to do again the post install patch process with that patch unselected? On the contrary, is it necessary to reinstall the whole system again? What about "force cache rebuilt"?